How can meditation affect your brain?

1. How can meditation affect your brain? Examineone interaction between cognition and physiology in terms of behaviour. Evaluatetwo relevant studies.”

2. What is cognition? • It’s any process that involves our mind • the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses. • Examples of cognitive processes are: • Language • Memory • Problem solving • Imagination

3. What is physiology? • The biological functions of our bodies • Examples of physiological processes include: • Neurotransmission • Secretion of hormones (e.g. melatonin) • Dendritic branching (neuroplasticity)

4. How do they interact? • What study have we looked at so far that investigate cognitive and physiological factors? • HM’s case study shows how the hippocampus (physiology) is integral in the formation of new long term memories (cognitive). • Davidson’s study will show how meditation (cognition) can influence levels of gamma waves (physiology).

5. What is an EEG? • An EEG measures the electrical charge that neurons produce when they are activated in the brain. • It is useful for measuring things like emotion and sleep. • An EEG is not technically a ‘brain imaging’ device as it only provides a graphical printout of the electrical activity in the brain. • There are 256 sensors that are placed all over the person’s head to measure the ‘brain waves.’

6. Richard Davidson’s Study • Read the information on the reverse of your SLT sheet. I will then explain the study with deliberate mistakes – you will get an M and M for each mistake you spot…

7. Beat the Teacher!!! • Get ready to spot the mistakes!

8. Aim • The aim of Davidson’s study was to measure the effects of gamma waves on meditation. • Correct Answer: • It’s the opposite: Davidson wanted to investigate how many hours of meditation could influence levels of gamma waves in the brain.

9. Methods • Participants: • There were Eight Tibetan monks who had between 15,000-54,000 hours experience. • There were also ten volunteers who had trained in meditation for one year. • Correct answers: They had a minimum of 10,000 hours of experience and the volunteers had only trained for one week.

10. Methods cont… • Design: • This is a true experiment as the independent variable is being manipulated by the researcher in a controlled environment • Correct answer: this is in fact a type of qasi experiment, because the IV already exists. This is a natural experiment as the IV is occuring before the study (Davidson did not instruct the monks to meditate for 54,000 hours).

11. Methods cont… • Procedures: • The monks were asked to meditate on compassion

12. Results • All the monks experienced an increase in gamma wave levels. • One volunteer’s gamma wave levels increased. • Two volunteer’s gamma wave levels increased. • All the monks gamma wave levels stayed above their normal level at the conclusion of the experiment. • The movement of the waves was better organised and coordinated than it was in the volunteers.

13. Conclusions • The left-parietal lobe was the most activated area of the brain in the monks. • The left-prefrontal cortext • This is associated with contentment and happiness. • This suggests that the monks could experience more positive emotions because they have more neural networks in their ‘emotional centre.’

14. Evaluation Discussion • In peers, discuss strengths and limitations of this natural experiment.